This morning's red post collection includes a Twitch bundle & legacy skins in the shop to celebrate his updated skin splash arts, an update on 2016 ranked reward distribution, a reminder and FAQ on the LCU Open Beta a summary of the reddit Assassin AMA, and more!

Twitch’s splash has mutated - Bundle & Legacy skins in shop

To go along with Twitch's set of updated skin splash arts in 6.22, a limited time bundle of his skins is up in the shop! The three legacy Twitch skins - Kingpin ,Whistler Village, and Vandal - are also all available individually in the shop through November 16th!

"Updated splashes for Twitch are ripe for the picking. Contaminate the Rift with Legacy skins Kingpin Twitch (520 RP), Whistler Village Twitch (520 RP), and Vandal Twitch (975 RP), or own the skin bundle before they scurry away on November 16, 2016 at 23:59 PT.

The Plague Rat Bundle - 2617 RP (3170 RP if you need the champion)

Available until November 16, 2016 at 23:59 PT

Twitch

Kingpin Twitch (Legacy)

Whistler Village Twitch (Legacy)

Vandal Twitch (Legacy)

Pickpocket Twitch

Gangster Twitch"

While the splash art was also updated in 6.22, note that Medieval Twitch is NOT available in the shop or bundle as he is a LIMITED skin. There is currently no way to obtain the skin following the RAF retirement last year.

In case you missed 'em, here are the full versions of the five updated Twitch skin splashes:

and should you be interested in picking up the bundle or any individual skins, here's a set of previews:

2016 Ranked Rewards Being Distributed

[UPDATE: Based on player reports, seems many servers have started to receive rewards! Remember these typically go out in batches. Stay tuned for more info & look for your rewards to be distributed soon!]

LCU Open Beta Reminders and FAQ

[NOTE: Seeing a lot of questions about this stuff! The majority of information below is from 6.22 notes.]

As mentioned in the patch notes, the League Client Update Open beta will start for all regions during the patch 6.22 - OCE will lead the charge and start a earlier than others:

"Open beta is coming for all regions during this patch!

Once the beta begins, the download will appear for everyone launching the game, and if you don't feel like upgrading right away, you'll still have the option to upgrade through your launcher at any point during the beta. For testing purposes, open beta will hit OCE slightly earlier during patch 6.22 than other regions.

We’ll be working out a few kinks and adding the remainder of the client’s missing features (like spectator mode) over the next few patches—it’s a beta, after all! To those of you who want to jump in right away: if you run into anything funky, be sure to hit us with that sweet, sweet feedback.

With the open beta quickly approaching, Riot support has put up an FAQ article to answer questions on the LCU - including how to upgrade to the beta, features, tech used in the new client, and account related information.

Don't forget that anyone who participates on the live LCU Alpha will be receiving an exclusive summoner icon! You can earn this icon by login into the LCU Alpha Look for it to hit your account by November 29th!

"Finally, as a small thank you for the hard work of alpha testers, we created an exclusive summoner icon for everyone who participated in the alpha. Your feedback was invaluable for the client team. If you log in to the alpha before November 15th, you'll get it!

On the topic of LCU, a few issues were introduced in 6.22 - check the links below for context and help threads. While not the solution for all problem, many issues can also be fixed by running a client repair

Replays Testing on new League Client in NA only

We’re starting to test Replays in LCU over the course of patch 6.22, and there’s a couple things to keep an eye out for. First, you may see features like the Annotated Timelines and the record button before you’re able to download and watch a replay. This is an expected part of the rollout process, but we wanted to give you a heads up. Second, the initial live test will be in NA. We’ll continue to keep you updated on progress as we get closer to a global launch. In the meantime, let us know what you think!

We turned it on this morning for the new client in NA. You'll see a new button on End of Game and in Match History. If it doesn't work on the first time you try after the patch, try going to Match History or relogging in. There's a known issue that happens sometimes where the button fails the first time after a patch.

Remember that the 6.22 patch notes mention NA and OCE will be testing the replay system during 6.22:

"We're testing replays on NA and OCE during patch 6.22. Replays will be available only on the updated client. If you’re in the League client update alpha, please give replays a test-run before we release it worldwide."

Patch Chat with the Playtest Team - 6.22, big changes in the preseason!

The Playtest team is back again with a patch chat discussion thread on our most recent patch 6.22!

I'm Aesah on Riot's Playtest Team, a group of Diamond+ players who play with the new champions, reworks, balance tweaks, items, and map updates before they are released. It's our job to the test the changes that our designers come up with and ensure that we're introducing positive changes to LoL in terms of both balance and fun. We'll be watching this thread to answer as many questions as we can.

6.22 is our preseason patch, and it is HUGE so I won't be going into as much detail as usual, rather just listing everything here as a reference for us to discuss it within the thread. Client update. Major assassin update for Talon, Katarina, Leblanc, and Rengar. Minor updates for Fizz, Kha'zix, Akali, Zed, Ekko, and Shaco. Alistar and Twitch updates, and tweaks to Ivern and Kled. Stealth changes including Control Wards and shimmering. Flat penetration replaced with Lethality on runes, items, and masteries. A ton of item changes: support itemization notably including Locket, Knight's Vow, and Redemption; assassin Itemization such as Edge of Night, Duskblade, and Ghostblade; and a bunch more. Mastery changes, most notably Fervor and Battle changes and Courage of the Collosus replacing Strength of Ages. Seeds in the jungle including Blast Cone, Scryer's Bloom, and Honeyfruit. Different jungle camps and Smite. Update to minions, turrets, and neutral epics.

All of us on the Playtest Team are avid gamers so feel free to talk to us as fellow LoL players!

Riot's 24- Hour Impact Challenge Livestream on Friday

This Friday (November 11th) Riot will be hosting a 24-hour livestream in support of the Impact Challenge. - Rioters, community members, and special guests will all be playing various games for 24 hours straight!

"We're counting down the last day of the Impact Challenge during a livestream hosted at the main Riot campus in Los Angeles, California. Join a rotating cast of Rioters including Dash, Scarizard, and Seth Killian along with Foxdrop, Jimmy Wong, Rocket Jump, and other special guests starting at 10:00 AM PST on Friday, November 11, as we game for 24 hours straight. We’ll be playing League, Mechs vs Minions, and more of our favorite games on the officialLeague of Legends Twitch channel.

RiotMEMEMEMEME here from the Champion Update Team - with the PreSeason Assassins running rampant around the rift I'm sure you have a question or two. So some of the Assassins Team is here to answer your Assassins inquires for a bit.

General

When asked about seeing follow up tuning or changes for assassins, RiotRepertoir commented:

"Quote:

If some of the Assassins should happen to be weaker than expected when can we expect to see buffs on the PBE?

Probably within the first patch or two. Given that a bunch of champions are seeing change here, it's likely we'll have some come out too strong and some come out too weak. We'll be keeping an eye out and adjusting as necessary."

As for major goals of the update and the tactical/strategic identity of assassins as a class,GreaterBelugaWhalecommented:

"Quote:

What, going forward, do you want the tactical/strategic identity of the Assassin class to be?

A common criticism of the Assassin rework is that you have lowered the burst window on most assassins, while retaining their common weaknesses, yet most control mages are able to deal similar damage as quickly with more to offer the team overall. Your response?

A major goal was allowing opponents to understand why they are dying and what they could do otherwise to avoid a repeat fate. When a champion is capable of jumping on you and killing you instantly, this is a much more difficult task than when the champion is at 700 range not only from gameplay reasons, but also psychological reasons.

I think if you actually pay attention, you'll notice we took two different approaches here: Kat and Rengar have higher burst than they did before (Sinister Steel had a 25% AP ratio -> Dagger pickups have a 100% AP ratio), but more restrictions on how they can gap-close, while LB and Talon have fewer restrictions on how they gap-close (LB can effectively misdirect or cause moments of hesitation that allow her to get the jump), but traded in their ability to instantly burst."

"I definitely feel that control mages are a bit to strong right now as well. That is a separate problem though and we should be making changes for the long-term health of the game."

When asked about thoughts on these sets of changes as long term fixes vs short term sort of "bandaid" fixes, 20thCenturyFaux commented:

"Quote:

Do you feel like your changes actually helped to balance assassins in the long run, or was it a bandaid fix?

I feel strongly we've done good work for the long run. First patch of preseason is typically pretty spicy balance wise, but all of these assassins are far more balance-able than they were before. Those little things here and there that give some breathing room to the opponents also give breathing room to the numbers on the assassins' kits. It's subtle but in the long haul it's likely to be the most important aspect of the update in terms of keeping these characters fun to play."

When asked what the biggest lesson learned from the Marksman class update was, Reav3 noted:

"Quote:

What have you learned from the Marksman Update and applied on the Assasin Update?

Sometimes less is more. We did less big reworks but put way more time into them."

"I think one of the main things that differed in our approach is that we didn't limit scope of change so much on Assassins, but we did fewer as a result. Ultimately I think it's a better approach. We don't have to cram an update into just one or two skills."

20thCenturyFaux also commented on considerations regarding champion mains when it comes to reworks:

"Quote:

Do you guys worry about alienating the kind of player who has 1000's of hours (or games) playing one of these assassins in their pre-reworked iteration?

I have not played any champ with that fervor, but I could see some serious anger if I'd dedicated myself to a champ for a long time, purchased all their skins, and changes were made to the core of that champ.

Very yes. Lots of things cause special problems for dedicated mains -- they aren't just learning a new character, they're doing it while unlearning their old play. Muscle memory, instincts, habits, all these things can work against them.

That's without considering the biggest pitfall of all -- whether their previous experience feels validated or invalidated. That's especially tricky for assassins, who historically have made their claim to fame by doing massive amounts of upfront burst damage out of nowhere.

If I'm a 1000 game main and most of my fondest memories are doing a thing that is explicitly intended to be nerfed... it's a bit harder for me to get on board an update."

When asked for an opinion on where the larger scope updates might fit into competitive play,Reav3 commented:

"Quote:

Thoughts on which rework will be most relevant in the professional scene?

It's always tough to predict these kinds of things. For example, we didn't initially think Vlad would be super relevant in pro play and he ended up the most relevant.

My guess is that initially Rengar, Kha'zix, and Fizz will be relevant.

I think once pros put enough time into LeBlanc she will be relevant again. Her mastery curve is crazy high though so it will probably take time.

Talon is a wildcard. His parkour is so unique that I have no idea what will happen with him in pro play.

I can see Kat being a situationally strong pick in competitive if someone puts the time into her to learn her. She will likely not be blind pickable though due to her inherent weaknesses.

I'm sure all of this will be wildly inaccurate though as it usually is."

Uh bro.. I will bet you a small loan of a milllion dollars that Fizz won't get picked mid lane

Edit: Unless it's LPL. China has a hard on for fizz

Yeah I can definitely see the Assassins being much more popular in LPL then other regions. Having a stronger laning phase does help with pro play pick though. If and When we do move to 10 bans that also greatly increases the possibility of seeing more assassins like Fizz in pro play."

"Personal thought would be Talon. The rotations and global pressure could be fantastically strong in the right hands."

When asked about the differences between assassins as a class and divers, Reav3 noted:

"Quote:

What now distinguish assassin's from full damage Wukong\j4\Vi\Diana\Lee-Sin\Fiora\etc?

Very High Target Selection and High Mobility. Most of the champions you mentioned don't have a way to reliably get out of a bad situation. Divers go in and don't go out. Assassins generally have a reliable escape route."

"Mobility and Target Selection is much better on Assassins so if you want that you would probably play a Assassin over a burst mage. While a burst mage can reliably delete someone they have a much harder time getting into range to do that. If a Assassin wants to get to someone then they usually can. Most of the burst/control mages also have less mobility and can't escape as well"

LeBlanc

When asked about the delay on LeBlanc's new passive, 20thCenturyFaux commented:

"Quote:

Don't you feel the delay on her passive makes it too easy for defense though? I haven't played her yet, but on the opposing team it seems very easy for the squishy to walk away and make sure they have the correct defense. In combination to having to telegraph your target, you then have to have the correct position afterwards to hit them and put yourself into more risk at the same time, as the best combination is land a W and proc with Q. If she was given a reduced charge time, it would still give the window of opportunity for hard CC, flash, exaust etc. but allow her to proc the passive and port back out while still having the window of being hit with cc or damage.

It's much easier to get how to play against LB than it is to get how to play as her. She's always been challenging to play, she's gotten an even longer mastery curve with the update, and players with experience on her have some tricky muscle memory re-learning to do with the R input change. I'd expect her to feel stronger after players learn her, but time will tell how correct that ends up being.

Players do need some ability to play against assassins, and there may currently be too much or too little. If it's too easy to get away from LB, imo we have the levers we need to fix it. If nothing else, a change in how long the mark takes to charge would definitely produce results, and the odds are pretty good we wouldn't have to go that far."

As for any sort of potential reverts, Reav3 reiterated the goal of the assassin class work:

"Quote:

Is there a possibility, that when u see the LeBlanc change was total failiure, to revert the entire rework ?

Of course. Any rework has that possibility. I think LeBlancs rework has a insanely high mastery curve now though. We will definitely have to wait a bit of time to evaluate how her rework turns out.

One risk of a revert though is that old leblanc will go back to being a generalist assassin, which means if she is ever strong she invalidates all the other Assassins. The main goal of the class reworks is to make the champions in the class different from one another. One of the problems with the marksmen class is that Lucian is still a very strong generalist ADC. If Lucian is ever strong he kind of dominates the ADC champion pool.

Before this class update Zed and Leblanc were kind of the generalist AD and AP assassins. If either of them were ever strong they dominated the Assassin Champion pool."

Your leblanc's champ designer, right? Please take a look at r/leblancmains if you haven't taken any hints from the majority of feedback on her. Most of the responses in this subreddit are coming from silver-gold players - where any champ is viable in ranked. I'd suggest taking a look at opinions on lb from high-elo streamers (scarra, quas, valkrin, etc) for more effective assessment on the rework.

I try my best to understand all the feedback and take as many hints as I can. We've gotten some good stuff from /r/leblancmains and moving the needle on the main worries will take in-game experience -- "this champ will not be able to win in high elo due to the mark delay" and "i felt awkwardness when i tried these changes". It's stuff that we can only really evaluate on the live environment; we think she'll still be viable at high elo and we feel the playstyle shift is responsible for most awkward feels and fades as players acclimate, but time will tell. We've talked about all this stuff in the PBE thread, so there wouldn't be new info coming from me."

Scrapped Abilities & Concepts

When asked about reworked abilities that may have been scrapped or only existed as a concept during development, several folks chimed in:

Any cool assassin rework related ability ideas that were scrapped during dev?

At one point when LeBlanc ulted she would go invisible and the clone would use the ability ..... people were very frustrated every playtest. At one point we all heard Groovylord yell across the building "I DON'T KNOW WHATS REAL ANYMORE"

"Specifically, LB's R had a wukong clone type mechanic where enemies couldn't tell if she had ulted or not--the clone would swap in at the beginning of the spellcast and LB would be stealth for a second or so. Any single-target damage from a champion would pop the clone and reveal LeBlanc's stealth.

It was pretty sweet conceptually, but there was a devil in the details--playing against it felt like mobility and LB already has a ton of that so its frustration cost was too high for what we were getting. If you see LeBlanc at spot X, then she vanishes and there's LeBlanc at spot Y, that's functionally the same as if she teleported in terms of the playing against experience."

Seems like such a fun ability, like smoke in Dota. prob a nightmare to balance but it would a be cool addition to the game... (and not THAT broken tbh..)

Lux's W was originally a line AoE Stealth, but it didn't have a fade time at all. They were instantly invisible. It was awful. Rengar's was like his ult normally is, but a circle AoE (like smoke), and it was pretty good.

I remember them saying they looked at akali decided she needed a full vgu at some point, and were looking at maybe doing fizz for the 5th

Initially we were doing Akali Kat LB Rengar, but shelved Akali because we didn't think we could solve her problems adequately. Hence the band-aid change-list. Don't get me wrong - I actually think those changes are significant improvements towards her game health. But she can be so much more."

ricklessabandonalso dashed into the discussion on Akali's changes & mechanics:

"Quote:

Can you please comment on the Akali rework? Most people have found it to make her worse and even more clunky. Why is she reliant on autoattacks in the first place being an AP assassin? Isn't this just going to make people play her tanky to get these autos off before getting blown up? I feel like the only benefit she got was not having pinks counter her, which is something that should have been in her kit from the beginning because of the limited shroud area.

akali's mark of the assassin ability is triggered by a basic attack (which is a healthy thing to ask of an assassin with her ultimate) so without that being reworked she'll need to attack at least a couple times in most engagements—i don't think we'll ever see a version of akali that never uses basic attacks in her kill pattern, but i suppose anything's possible within a vgu.

her old passive asked her to attack repeatedly for a significant damage contribution which to your point isn't the most assassin-like pattern one could have—changing her passive should allow her to get more value when sticking with an assassin-like pattern/build and hopefully that's helps us keep her in a healthier (and more playable) state."

As far as I understand it, one of the goals of the assassin update was to prolong the kill window of an assassin. That meant some reduction in Akali's burst. As such, Akali feels more like a fighter than an assassin, was that the intention?

there were a few goals in mind, but one of the smaller ones was to push her further away from 'fighter' patterns and builds and solidify her more in the (ap) assassin space. to do this, we shifted her damage to be in repeated spikes instead of having some of her damage sources be very bursty (gunblade, old shadow dash) while others come in sustained patterns (old passive, old crescent slash).

if it turns out that she doesn't function when leaning on those assassin patterns, or if the fighter patterns are too strong, we'll follow up with balance changes."

"ah, sorry if it wasn't clear. essentially she has multiple damage patterns before (some fighter, some assassin) and we made them much more consistent across the kit (all assassin).

the thing that's likely to be the most confusing about this is that 'assassin' isn't not interchangeable with 'champion that 100-to-0s a target in one rotation' now—akali's going to need two rotations to kill in a lot more scenarios now. hopefully with the changes as a whole she'll feel a lot less threatened in the time between those rotations as well.

When asked why they removed the bonus damage from Kha'Zix evolved Q, shared:

"We removed the bonus dmg on evolved Q because our understanding of Kha's priorities as an Assassin put instantaneous burst damage over basically anything else, meaning that so long as a satisfying amount of power was in Q evo's bonus damage, it would be mandatory to balance Kha'zix around evolving it because he had to take it."

Another question, you nerf his early game by shifting the power into late game. However i feel like you nerfed his early game only to give him still a bad late game. What was the idea behind his changes and nerfs because you say you wanted him to be picked vs certain team comps but that was his already current state.

The historic balance problem with Zed is that when he is ~50% win rate for normal play, he becomes the only viable assassin at higher skill floors of play. This occurs because Zed is a generalist who can find a way to excel in almost any situation an assassin is expected to handle while also bringing a consistent laning phase, etc. With this roster update, other assassins have new tools/strategic outputs that should help make the former statement less true. Still, finding ways to sharpen Zed further gives us the room to add power back to his base numbers/kit without risking Zed taking over the assassin slot in every high skill game.

We are much more comfortable buffing Zed in a world where every assassin has games where they clearly excel over their counterparts. The goal of these Zed changes were to help push him into a space where he excels clearly against some teams and is clearly weaker against others. In theory, this means that if Zed is weaker now, we have much more room to buff him since he shouldn't heavily degrade pick diversity at higher levels of play anymore.

That being said, the changes I did to Zed should buff his potential early game damage output. Previously you were only getting 4% bonus AD pre level 14 off of his W's passive. Now starting from level 6, you could be gaining way more than that 4% was ever giving you. The changes I did on E were targeted at making his Death Mark execution pattern less reliable on a single E-Q-AA combo but open up room for more Shadow Slashes for Zed and his opponent to think about when dueling. All in all, his end-game potential could be under-tuned right now, but we are in a way easier place to find buffs for him due to the holistic set of roster changes in this preseason."

Items

When asked about the lack of AP assassin items added with the update, ricklessabandon commented:

"Quote:

Oh and how come that AP Assassins didn't get any new items while AD assassins did?

i think that time and scope played in as big factors. we talked about doing some smaller changes, but given how closely tied together mage items are, we weren't confident we'd be able to get in a set of changes that wouldn't do more harm than good on top of everything else already in motion.

if we do a pass later on, we'd have to make sure we're able to differentiate between items that feel good for ap assassins vs items that just make burst mages (e.g., syndra, annie, et al) better. that would probably include making sure their gold is going towards cool things that aren't "be better at killing someone" that ap assassins actually want, which means the scope of the project is decently sized at the start."